83^rd Infantry Division

The 83rd Infantry Division landed across Omaha Beach on June 19, 1944, and after hedgerow fighting around Périers, joined Operation COBRA on July 26, crossing the Taute River the next day. Sweeping into Brittany, it began the assault on Saint-Malo on August 4, driving German defenders back to The Citadel and the Dinard fortifications in combined attacks; Dinard fell on August 15 and The Citadel surrendered two days later. Divisional elements then made an amphibious assault on Île de Cézembre, off Saint-Malo, on September 2 to reduce the last offshore garrison.

Campaign map image

World War II Campaign Map of the 83rd Infantry Division. Map courtesy of HistoryShots.

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Moving south to screen the Loire and accept the surrender of isolated German forces, the division then advanced east to the German frontier. It fought in difficult terrain along the Sauer and Luxembourg border, the 329th Infantry Regiment contesting the Battle for Grevenmacher in early October before the division took Echternach on October 7 and continued clearing into the West Wall approaches. During the Ardennes crisis, the division shifted west to contest the German salient, fighting the Battle of Winden over Christmas before moving to Havelange and pressing the reduction of the Rochefort pocket into January 1945.

After returning to the Roer sector and crossing the Rhine in April 1945, the division advanced across the Münster Plain into north-central Germany. It captured Hannover and reached the Elbe in mid-April, making contact with Soviet forces in early May as organized resistance in the Reich collapsed. USHMM recognizes the division as a liberating unit at Langenstein, a Buchenwald subcamp — an episode that falls near the end of its sustained combat record running from the bocage of Normandy to the Elbe.